If Martians landed on earth tomorrow and scanned the news for the last couple of weeks they would come to the quick conclusion that the biggest current threat to world peace is Iran. Iran, according to the Bush Administration, has its fingers in almost every national security pie in sight.
Consider the following news blips:
Iranian weapons have begun flowing into Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday, but he and Afghan President Hamid Karzai agreed involvement by Tehran cannot yet be proved.
U.S. officials say they have found smoking-gun evidence of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq: brand-new weapons fresh from Iranian factories. According to a senior defense official, coalition forces have recently seized Iranian-made weapons and munitions that bear manufacturing dates in 2006.
This suggests, say the sources, that the material is going directly from Iranian factories to Shia militias, rather than taking a roundabout path through the black market. “There is no way this could be done without (Iranian) government approval,” says a senior official.
Israel and Gaza? There too:
Hamas’s stunningly swift victory in a brief civil war has left the Jewish state at its must vulnerable for three decades.
Inspired by a philosophy of militant Islam and backed by Iranian weaponry and military training, Hamas poses a direct threat to Israel and, if left unchecked, will soon be in a position to step up its lethal rocket attacks on towns and villages across the border.
And Iran is sheltering Al Qaeda; at least that’s the claim by some:
The disclosures in last month’s report, ” Al Qaeda’s (mis)Adventures in the Horn of Africa,” from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, are the first official government documents to acknowledge that Saif al-Adel, who is one of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists, was inside Iran. Based in part on captured documents that were funneled to the government’s Harmony Database, the new disclosures suggest that Iran was more complicit with Al Qaeda than the Bush administration has previously suggested.
Who isn’t Iran helping go astray and create mayhem? Paris Hilton perhaps? Is Iran responsible for her drunk driving? Also should we entertain the possibility that Scooter Libby was not responsible for lying to the FBI? It could have been the Iranians who made him do it. Damn that Ahmadinejad! And if Martians have landed on earth then by Allah’s chin whiskers the frigging Iranians are guilty of that as well.
Now let’s come back to reality. Iran is first and foremost a Shia state comprised of Persians. It is not a Sunni state nor is it an Arab state. Islamic Arab Sunni extremists do not like Shias. Especially Persian Shias. Period. No gray area on this one. Remember the former head of Al Qaeda in Iraq–Abu Musab al Zarqawi? He had some choice words for the Shia:
Though Al Qaeda under Bin Laden and Zawahiri had not made Shias their targets and did not publicly condemn them, Zarqawi held that Shias were the most evil of mankind. . . . Zarqawi compared Shias to snakes, scorpions and enemy spies. His hatred could be traced to the ideology of the 13th century cleric Ibn Taimiya, the father of Wahabism and Salafism. Shias were polytheists who worshipped at graves and shrines. Shias were to be avoided at all costs. They could not be married, they could not bear witness and animals they slaughtered could not be eaten. In this way Zarqawi defended operations that caused Muslims to die. Martyrdom operations, as he called suicide bombers, were sanctified because defending Islam was even more important than defending the lives of Muslims.
How about Hamas? Are they agents of Tehran? According to Global Security.org:
HAMAS (in Arabic, an acronym for “Harakat Al-Muqawama Al-Islamia” — Islamic Resistance Movement — and a word meaning courage and bravery) is a radical Islamic fundamentalist organization which became active in the early stages of the intifada, operating primarily in the Gaza District but also in Judea and Samaria. HAMAS is the strongest opposition group to the peace process, to the PLO, and remains a powerful player in Middle East politics.
HAMAS was formed in late 1987 as an outgrowth of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is a Sunni Islamic organization which was established at the beginning of the first Intifada, (December 1987) by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Hamas is dedicated to the establishment of an Islamic Palestinian State that encompasses Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Paradoxically, the formation of HAMAS was encouraged by the Israeli government, which saw the new group as a religious competitor to the generally secular Palestinian nationalist groups.
And the Taliban? The Taliban are Sunni extremists who share the world view of Zarqawi. These guys partnering with Iran? Not likely.
There is something not kosher about the anti-Iranian line being pushed by the Bush Administration. Hezbollah radicals and Hamas radicals are not interchangeable. They may be radicals but they are not on the same theological page. It is important that the politicians and the media take time to become informed before jumping on the “Let’s Lynch Iran” bandwagon. It was ignorance of Iraq and the rifts separating Sunni and Shia that have helped fuel the debacle in Iraq. We do not need to recreate the same, stupid mistakes vis-a-vis Iran.
UPDATE: There’s an excellent background piece at op-ed news by Abbas Sadeghian.
